fiC 



U. S. GRANT." 



SPEKCH OK 



HON. Joseph b. foraker 

AT THE DNNER GIVEN BY THE 

AMERicus Club, Pittsburgh, Pa., 

APRIL 2T, 1887. 



Mk. Chairman and Gentlemen of the Amekicus Club 
— This is no time for an3'thing more tlian a mere sketch. I 
inust therefore of necessity omit mucli tliat properly belongs 
to a full consideration and discussion of the life, character 
and public services of the illustrious man whose name has 
been proposed. Under such circumstances I know aou will 
pardon me for passing over the entire period of his youth 
with the single remark that his birth was humble and his 
boyhood, at least prior to his admission to West Point, com- 
jiaralivel}' uneventt"ul. The most significant, and probably 
the only, thing connected wilh his early histor}- that gave 
anv real promise of his future distinction was the fact that he 
was born in Ohio. At West Point he was thorough, faithful 






and did well, but he was not distinguished. On the con- 
trary he was graded well down the list. In the ^Mexican 
war, however, though serving in the humble capacity ol a 
line officer, with but little opportunity to attract attention, he 
so far succeeded in displaying his high qualities of sound 
judgnYent and heroic bravery as to secure commendation for 
efficient services and promotion for gallant and meritorious 
conduct. When peace came again he soon tired of the mili- 
tary, and in 1853, led bv an ardent love for his wife and 
family, which, to his and their credit, grew stronger as his 
honors increased, he resigned his commission and returned 
to the walks of civil life, where in humble toil and honest 
poverty he learned new phases of human nature and new 
lessons of patience and perseverence. Doubtless to many, 
and probably to none more than to himself, it seemed at that 
time that his life had been well-nigh wasted. But not so. 
He had passed through an experience that was well calcu- 
lated to equip him for the great services he was to render. 
His case was another striking illustration of the great truth 
that, in the mysterious ways of Providence, the chosen 
agents of the Almighty for the accomplishment of His great- 
est works are usually prepared unawares. The discipline 
and study of West Point had given him a splendid physical 
and mental development, while the leisure and quiet of the 
frontier had given him opportunity to study thoroughh- the 
art of war. And that is not all he had been given oppor- 
tunity to learn. He served in New York, Missouri, Louisi- 
ana, Texas, Michigan, Oregon and California, as well as in 
Mexico, and thus was enabled to see and learn early in life 
that the United States comprised a perfectly imperial domain 
of territor}', avast quantity of which la}' west of the city of 
Buffalo, N. Y. It enabled him also to become practically 
acquainted with the fact that we had a great variety and di- 



versity of soil and climate, and that we were blessed with 
countless rivers and harbors and lakes, upon wliose improve- 
ment and general utilization depended, in large degree, the 
development of that great internal commerce and travel that 
have contributed so much to the unexampled prosperity- 
which the people of this republic enjov. He discovered, also, 
and appreciated the fact, that we had inexhaustible resources 
of coal, iron, copper, silver, lead and lumber, and every 
other kind of wealth necessary to the establishment of all 
the industries essential to diversity of employment, the com- 
fort of man and the ab>olute independence of the Ameri- 
can people. He saw how each and every section of the 
country was bound together in vital interest wiih every 
other, and foresaw with the vision of a statesman and the 
pride of a soldier the magnificent grandeur that was in store 
for us as a people if we did but remain bound together in 
union, and with a common purpose tbllow a common flag to 
a common destiny. He saw more than this. He not only 
learned the value of the Union, but he learned the dangers 
that threatened its existence, and thus came to hate with all 
the detestation that could be born of a loyalty that no lan- 
guage can exaggerate, the infamous doctrines that were pro- 
mulgated for its overthrow. The consequence was that al- 
though the war found him in obscurity yet it tbund him pe- 
culiarlv fitted tor the work he was to do. All this is easily 
seen and understood now, but it was not so then. He seems 
to have been the onlv man in the Union who was conscious 
that he was qualified to serve his country with efliciency in 
that great emergency ; and, evidently, he had no adequate 
conception of his capabilities in that respect. His first ap- 
pearance was at the head of a companv of only one hundred 
men, and all he asked was, to use his own language, an op- 
portunity to si rve the country that had educated him "in 



any position where it was thought he might be useful." It 
was the 15th cia}- of June, t\vo months after Fort Sumter 
was fired upon and two months after he made this appeal, 
before his services were accepted, and he was given a com- 
mission. 

What could seem more incredible than that a man who 
was so humble and obscure when the war commenced that 
he was compelled to stand waiting and importuning for two 
long months before he was allowed to take the field, should 
achieve such distinguished success that when the war ended 
he would command all the armies of the Union and be idol- 
ized by the whole country as the most renowned general of 
modern time? And yet such is the wonderfully thrilling 
story that future generations are to read in the history of 
that great struggle. To the latest day the record of his 
achievements will challenge the admiration of the world, ex- 
cite the patriotic pride of his countrymen and arouse the af- 
fectionate regard of every lover of liberty, law and govern- 
ment on the face of the earth. But how does the most that 
posterity can possibly know compare with the least that 
everv loyal, patriotic man was made to feel, as, amid the 
lowering clouds and flaming fires of that great contest, we 
saw him bearing the flag of the Union in triumph as he 
carved his wa}^ to victory ? When the war broke upon us 
we knew but little of what it involved, yet we knew enough 
to know that we were quite unprepared for it. We knew we 
had no army, and we knew we had no generals. We had 
onlv *aith in the righteousness of our cause, the patriotism 
of the people, and that we were in the hands of an over- 
ruling, guiding and protecting Providence. Having only 
such knowledge we were ready to go forward boldly enough, 
but we telt that we were necessarily going forward blindly, 
and hence it was that the defeat at Bull Run, followed by 



reverses elsewhere, bred dissension and distrust, and created 
alann and apprehension, and, in consequence, we entered 
upon the second year ot" the war enveloped in a state of 
dread and uncertainty that was rapidly underminin<( and de- 
stroying our great bulwark of confidence in ultimate tri- 
umph. Who that passed through it can ever forget with 
what anxiety we looked in that dark and trving hour tor a 
sign of deliverance? 

The great generals that we were confident the war would 
develop were supposed to be with that truly great and grand 
army on the banks of the Potomac, and we naturally looked 
there for some signal acliievement that was to dispel the 
gathering clouds of despair. But the drooping spirits of the 
loyal millions w'ere destined to sink lower and lower, until 
they were suddenly lit'ted up by that great, bright light of 
hope that unexpectedly broke upon us from the banks of the 
Cumberland, when the telegraph flashed the electrifving 
message across the continent that told how a quiet, unas- 
suming, almost unheard-of leader had, in mid-winter, with- 
out a word ot advertisement or anv kind of nonsense, taken 
the field, and defying snow and ice and sleet and storm, had 
made an offensive campaign, fought a great battle, and as 
the result of it demanded and received the unconditional sur- 
render of the frowning battlements of Donelson. 

From that moment the eyes of his countrymen were fixed 
upon Ulysses S. Grant, and what language can portray with 
what pride, admiration and ever-increasing confidence thev 
saw him constantly growing greater and grander as with 
restless activity he swept on and ever onward in the grandest 
series of military triumphs that it ever fell to the lot of any 
mortal to achieve ! No man who remembers that time can 
ever torget how we thanked God tVom the bottom of our 
hearts for the bull-dog courage, as it was called, that 



snatched victory out of defeat on the bloody fields of Shiloh. 
No expressions can do justice to the courage, self-reliance 
and strategic generalship displa^-ed in the capture of Vicks- 
burg and its garrison of 30,000 men. And nowhere, not 
even in the wars of Napoleon, can a parallel be found for 
the brilliant valor that planted the stars and stripes above the 
clouds on the Heights of Lookout, and swept Bragg, with 
his broken columns, like chaft' before the wind, from the crests 
of Mission Ridge. He was at once called by the spontane- 
ous demand of the whole loyal people, as well as by the 
Congress and President Lincoln, to the high rank of lieuten- 
ant general and placed in command of all the armies. He 
immediatelv planned and entered upon the execution of the 
closing campaigns of the war. There were some who 
feared that the fame he had won in the West fighting Beau- 
regard, Pemberton and Bragg could not be maintained when 
pitted against Lee in Virginia. He promptly dispelled all 
such delusions by almost the first sentence of his. instructions 
to his generals, when he said, in ever-memorable words, that 
the Armv of the Potomac would act from its then present 
base, having for its objective point not Richmond, or any 
other place on the map, but the army of General Lee, 
against which he proposed to hammer away, as he afterward 
said, until b}' mere attrition, if not otherwise, it should be 
completely broken and utterly destroyed. And he did ham- 
mer awa}', and if Lee had not scampered awa^' he would 
have been there hammering awa}' yet. When in the midst 
of the bloody battles of the Wilderness he seemed, to others, 
to be confronted by insurmountable difficulties, and there 
were those about him in high authority who sought to 
dissuade him from his plans, he overwhelmed all opposing 
counsel and captured anew and by storm the heads and hearts 
and affections and confidence of the whole countrv bv the 



quiet, determined, Grant-like response, " I propose to H^'lit it 
out on this line if it takes all summer." And he did figiit it 
out. He drove Lee out of the Wilderness and he kept on 
driving him from hill to hill and river to river and earth- 
work to earthwork, until, by complete, triumphant and final 
victorv, the clouds of war were forever dispersed, and the 
sunlight of peace once more beamed and smiled upon a torn 
and distracted nation, from the historic fields of Appomattox. 
Until this moment he had appeared only as an intrepid and 
invincible soldier and commander. 

But suddenly and unexpectedly he now exhibited a new 
and entirely different character by the magnanimity he dis- 
played toward his fallen foe, and by the invitation he so op- 
portunely gave to the whole country, as well as to the soldiers 
of the Confederacy, to turn at once from the excitements and 
ravages of war to the pursuits of peace, by telling General 
Lee in that quiet, unostentatious way for which he was so 
noted, to have his men keep their horses, " because they 
would need them to do the spring plowing with." 

In all the remarkable career of this most remarkable man 
there is nothing that more aptly portrays the greatness of 
his mind and the clear comprehension he had of the char- 
acter of the great struggle in which he had gained such un- 
dvino- laurels than the absolute absence from his mind at 
such a moment of anything like even an approximation to 
anv form of vanity. His whole nature seemed to be occu- 
pied with a sincere, earnest and patriotic desire to impress 
upon his fallen toes, in the very moment of their defeat and 
overthrow, thai they had been whipped into surrender not 
for anv purpose of humiliation or subjugation, but only that 
accepting and abiding by the results of the war in good 
faith they might be and remain part and parcel with us ot 
this <n-eat Union, and continue for all time to come co- 



s 

sharers with us in the peacetul enjoyment of its priceless 
blessings. It was inevitable that he should be the next 
President of the United States, not because he wanted it to 
be so, but because the patriotic masses of his countrymen 
would not have it otherwise. He did not need to start a 
literary bureau or in any other unseemly' way seek the place — 
the office sought the man, as it ever should. He was called 
to the presidency at a most trying time. Reconstruction 
measures had kept inflamed the excited passions which the 
war had aroused, and the bitterness of political strife was 
scarcely less than that of ^var itself. It was at a time of 
such intensity of feeeling and malignancy of politics that, in 
the exercise of his high powers, he entered upon the duty of 
settling an exasperating dispute with England, bringing 
order, confidence and credit out of our distressed finan- 
cial condition, and securing to every citizen of the United 
States, in every State of the Union, complete protection in 
the enjoN-ment of all the rights of citizenship, and, accord- 
ing to this great principle, bringing ever}^ seceding State 
back into its proper and harmonious relatir-n to the general 
government. He was successful in all these great under- 
takings. The Geneva tribunal of arbitration averted war 
and satisfactorily adjusted the controversy with England, 
and at the same time taught the civilized world, to his great 
credit and ours, that peaceful methods are the best, as well 
as the most Christian-like, for the settlement of international 
difficulties. 

Like a very Rock of Gibraltar he stood in the way of the 
flood-tide of inflation, and with his veto breaking the power 
of expansion, made specie resumption possible. If he did 
not succeed to the same extent in the matter of protecting 
every citizen of the Union, in every State of the Union, in 
the enjoyment and exercise of all his civil and political 



9 

rights it was not because of any omission of duty on his 
part. It was not until after his last term of olllce had ex- 
pired that the <^;dlant and heroic Republicans of the South 
were overwhelmed and compelled in many States and places 
to practically abandon their organization and cease to exist. 
To the last day that he was President the doctrine was con- 
tinually proclaimed and fearlessly kept to the forefront that, 
as to every national right, it was the duty of the national 
oovernment to protect its citizens at home as well as abroad. 
One of the last acts of his administration was to use the 
troops to protect the voters of South Carolina from intimida- 
tion and violence at the hands of the Ku-klux and the rifle 
clubs of that State. It was after his da}- before any Repub- 
lican countenanced the claim that if a citizen of a State 
could not secure his rights under the Constitution and laws 
of the United States at the hands of the authorities of his 
State, he w\as without remedy except onl}' to migrate. He 
had no patience with the idea that the government should 
have an unquestioned right, as all concede, to go into any 
State of the Union and there lay its hands upon any citizen 
of the State and compel him to go forth and do battle for it 
at the peril of his life, and then be powerless when its au- 
thority was duly invoked to protect that citizen in every 
ri"-ht tlie government owed him, after he should be mustered 
out of the service and be returned to his home. He could 
not understand why the State lines that were so low and so 
easily crossed in the one case should suddenly rise so high 
that they could not be crossed at all in the other. In other 
words, General Grant was a Republican. 

He believed in the Union and the Constitution. He be- 
lieved in the United States of America. He believed in the 
people of this country. He believed in the dignity and ele- 
vation of labor. He believed in the development of our re- 



10 

sources. He believed this nation ought to be independent 
of eveiy other nation on the face of the earth. He beHeved 
in a protective tariff, and was less concerned about revenue 
reform than he was to have enough protection to protect. 
But he believed first and above all in the rights of man. He 
believed in civil and political equalit}^ and he believed in the 
practical enforcement of what was theoretically proclaimed, 
and therefore it was that, wath all the ardor of his soul, he 
believed in a free ballot and a fair count, and hated and de- 
spised, as he ought to, every man who apologized for or was 
indifferent to the crime that would prevent *hem. Governed 
by these great principles he gave to the countr}' an adminis- 
tration of its civil affairs which, considering the difficulties 
by which it was beset, and measured by the comprehensive 
scope of its duties and the brilliant results of its achieve- 
ments, stands among all our peace administrations without a 
rival. It was a fit supplement and companion piece to his 
military career and placed him justly with Lincoln by the 
side of Washington. And yet he did not please everybody. 
On the contrary he shared the fate of all positive and vigor- 
ous great men. He was thoroughly disliked and hated in his 
time. In fact, no man was ever more mercilessly criticised 
or more maliciously and shamefully slandered, libeled and 
abused than he was at every step of his immortal career. 
We were told that he was drunk at Shiloh — crazy and a 
failure in the trenches before Vicksburg — that Mi.-sion Ridge 
was an accident, and that he was no general, but only a 
bloody butcher in the Wilderness : and, while he was Presi- 
dent, his enemies continually railed against him, claiming 
that he was everything that he should not be. But when he 
went abroad his traducers were sudderdy put to shame and 
their villification was hushed and buried out of sight for- 
ever beneath the homage of a world. No place could be 



11 

discovered where his fame had not prececU-d liim, and all 
around the globe not one Iniman being could be found who 
was either so high or so low as not to account it a great 
honor to meet and greet him. He returned in the fullness of 
fame to find his countrymen more devotedly attached to Iiim 
than ever before, not onlv because of the credit reflected 
upon them by the honor that had been paid to him, but also, 
and more particularlv, because they had witnessed how, 
wherever he traveled and however he might be honored, he 
never failed to manifest a genuine, Roman-like pride — not 
that he had been a great general, who had led a million men 
to victory, nor that he had been the President of the United 
States, and as such the civil ruler of 50,000,000 of people, 
but that he w^as an American citizen. 

That he was not the third time called to the presidency 
was due to considerations that had no relation whatever to 
him personally. On the contrary he was never more se- 
curely entrenched in the aftections of the American people 
than he was at the very moment when the historic fight of 
the 306 determined followers ended in del'eat at Chicago. 
It seemed as though he could not possibly do anything more 
to increase the esteem and affectionate regard in which he 
was held ; but he could — and he did. He was unwittingly 
involved and overwhelmed by financial disaster, and prac- 
tically at the same time smitten by a fatal malady. The 
unconquerable character of his nature was never more 
clearly demonstrated than then. It would be difficult to ex- 
aggerate the heroic fortitude and true Christian patience he 
displayed in the pathetic, unequal, but successful struggle 
that followed. Job cried out in his lamentations and said, 
'" Oh I that mine adversary had written a bocik I" as if that 
were, as it probably is, the most surely fatal undertaking 
an\' ordinar}' man can assume. General Grant's last work 



12 

was to write a book. He had a double purpose to serve. 
He sought not only to record his recollection of the 
great events with which he had been identified, but also to 
provide against want for the faithful and deserving compan- 
ion of his life and partner of all his joys and sorrows. It 
has been graphically said by some one that as he sat at one 
side of the table writing, Death sat at the opposite side impa- 
tiently waiting and watching. Without a tremor or a mur- 
mur he devoted himself to his labor of love. A merciful 
Providence lengthened his days and gave him strength until 
the last line and word had been written and his heart had 
been gladdened by the assurance that both his purposes 
had been accomplished, and then, as "gently as da}^ into 
night," he passed into eternity. 

The Americus Club do well to honor his memor}" by such 
celebrations as this of the day when he was born. He was 
not only our greatest soldier and the most distinguished and 
representative American who ever traveled abroad, but, next 
after Lincoln, he was our greatest President and our greatest 
Republican. 



013 787 985 2 



